“I don’t—­know,” she said simply; “I really don’t, Mr. Malcourt.”

And it was true; for their slight acquaintance warranted neither badinage nor effrontery; and she did not understand the sudden impulse toward provocation, unless it might be her contempt for Shiela Cardross.  And that was the doing of Mrs. Van Dieman.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at him, and after a moment, down at their clasped hands.  “Are we going to swim out, Mr. Malcourt?—­or shall we continue to pose as newly married for the benefit of the East Coast?”

“We’ll sit in the sands,” he said.  “We’ll probably find a lot of things to say to each other.”  But he dropped her fingers—­gently.

“Unless you care to join your—­care to join Miss Cardross.”

Even while she spoke she remained calmly amazed at the commonness of her own speech, the astonishing surface streak of unsuspected vulgarity which she was naively exhibiting to this man.

Vetchen came noisily splashing up to join them, but he found neither of them very attentive to him as they walked slowly to the beach and up to the dry, hot sand.

Virginia curled up in the sand; Malcourt extended himself full length at her feet, clasped fingers supporting his head, smooth, sun-browned legs crossed behind him; and he looked like a handsome and rather sulky boy lying there, kicking up his heels insouciantly or stretching luxuriously in the sun.

Vetchen, who had followed, began an interminable story on the usual theme of his daughter, Mrs. Tom O’Hara, illustrating her beauty, her importance, and the incidental importance of himself; and it was with profound surprise and deep offence that he discovered that neither Malcourt nor Miss Suydam were listening.  Indeed, in brief undertones, they had been carrying on a guarded conversation of their own all the while; and presently little Vetchen took his leave with a hauteur quite lost on those who had so unconsciously affronted him.

“Of course it is very civil of you to say you remember me,” Virginia was saying, “but I am perfectly aware you do not.”

Malcourt insisted that he recalled their meeting at Portlaw’s Adirondack camp on Luckless Lake two years before, cudgelling his brains at the same time to recollect seeing Virginia there and striving to remember some corroborative incident.  But all he could really recall was a young and unhappily married woman to whom he had made violent love—­and it was even an effort for him to remember her name.

“How desperately you try!” observed Virginia, leisurely constructing a little rampart of sand between them.  “Listen to me, Mr. Malcourt”—­she raised her eyes, and again the hint of provocation in them preoccupied him—­“I remembered you, and I have sometimes hoped we might meet again.  Is that amends for the very bad taste I displayed in speaking of your engagement before it has been announced?”

“I am not engaged—­to be married,” he said deliberately.